8 DEVELOPER AGENT SKILLSEST. 2026

Questionable
Hires.

Weird, but employed. Unfortunately, essential.

Hiring was a mistake. Firing them would be worse.

From a legacy-code necromancer to a test fraud auditor. Questionable personalities. Very specific engineering jobs.

Meet the team
Eight Questionable Hires as deadpan doodle characters
The hiring is done. The explaining isn’t.
CODEX & SKILL-COMPATIBLE AGENTSMeet your coworkers

Good at the job. Odd at the interview.

Call one when you need them. Each has a specific job and a stopping point.

01 / 08NECROMANCER

Necromancer

“Their reasons didn’t leave with them.”

Trace the purpose of suspicious legacy code through current callers, tests and Git history.

GIVE THEM A JOB$necromancer Can we remove this compatibility branch?
See an actual run

Odd characters. Clear working habits.

01

Test the theory.

Even “it’s the cache” needs evidence. Use experiments to distinguish causes.

02

Show the receipt.

Fail before. Pass after. Keep evidence from actual execution.

03

Keep small jobs small.

One button doesn’t need a new architecture. Finish within the requested scope.

Fewer promises. Open records.

Good results and adverse results are both public. General efficiency gains for the whole team remain unproven.

FEATURED / FROZEN CONFIRMATION

Same reviewed coverage. Different costs by task.

Five new tasks, two arms, one fresh session per cell. See the gains and the increased costs together.

mother-in-law-confirmation-2026-09-122026-09-12 / e76efcf

Mean token change per task-6.8%

With skill 93.2% / Without skill 100%

Mean time change per task-28.7%

With skill 71.3% / Without skill 100%

Reviewed targets met5/5 → 5/5

Without skill → With skill · False positives 0 → 0

Equal-weight mean of per-task skill/no-skill ratios. This is neither a reduction in summed tokens nor a billing saving.

Sum of input + output across every model response. Example: 10,000 tokens on the first response + 12,000 on the next = 22,000 for the task. Conversation and tool results sent again count in the next input. Cached input is already included in each response’s input; this is neither billing nor final-answer length.

Tokens decreased on 3, increased on 2 / 5 tasks

Look at every task

100% is the no-skill usage for that task. A longer bar means more resource use. Read the actual usage and increase or decrease alongside each task.

Without skillWith skill
Whole-task cumulative token ratio
Clear address29.8% more
Without skill 100%
With skill 129.8%

Without 64,055 → with 83,165

Guarded search17.6% less
Without skill 100%
With skill 82.4%

Without 80,127 → with 66,061

Double submit31.6% less
Without skill 100%
With skill 68.4%

Without 99,730 → with 68,259

Stale error20.8% less
Without skill 100%
With skill 79.2%

Without 83,396 → with 66,013

Nested city search6.4% more
Without skill 100%
With skill 106.4%

Without 82,009 → with 87,217

Elapsed time ratio by task
Clear address42.2% less
Without skill 100%
With skill 57.8%

Without 56.717 s → with 32.789 s

Guarded search50.9% less
Without skill 100%
With skill 49.1%

Without 52.006 s → with 25.534 s

Double submit17.0% less
Without skill 100%
With skill 83.0%

Without 71.950 s → with 59.735 s

Stale error59.9% less
Without skill 100%
With skill 40.1%

Without 91.347 s → with 36.634 s

Nested city search26.4% more
Without skill 100%
With skill 126.4%

Without 45.383 s → with 57.357 s

Inspect raw values & conditions

GPT-6 Astra · medium · 5 new tasks × 2 arms × 1 fresh session

Raw usage by task and arm
Task Arm Cumulative tokens Time (s) Target
Clear addressaddress-clear-boundaryWithout skill64,05556.717Met
Clear addressaddress-clear-boundaryWith skill83,16532.789Met
Guarded searchguarded-profile-searchWithout skill80,12752.006Met
Guarded searchguarded-profile-searchWith skill66,06125.534Met
Double submitinvoice-double-submitWithout skill99,73071.950Met
Double submitinvoice-double-submitWith skill68,25959.735Met
Stale errorlookup-stale-errorWithout skill83,39691.347Met
Stale errorlookup-stale-errorWith skill66,01336.634Met
Nested city searchnested-city-runnerWithout skill82,00945.383Met
Nested city searchnested-city-runnerWith skill87,21757.357Met
Raw sumsWithout skill409,317317.4035/5
Raw sumsWith skill370,715212.0495/5

Total tokens include cached input + output. Ratios of raw sums differ from the equal-weight task means plotted above.

Mixed whole-team results and adverse outcomes remain available in the decision index below.

Evidence published on GitHubApplies to the versions named there · may differ from this page’s download Featured comparisonThe experiment and limitations linked by featured.json

Skills guide the workflow. Results depend on the model, tool access, project and user instructions.

Start with one questionable decision.

Have Node.js/npm and Git? You’re ready. Choose your skills and supported agents.

npx skills add SoonGwan/questionable-hires
Installation guide ↗

No background processes · No telemetry

Runs the independent skills CLI. Review the CLI and selected skills before execution.

Download the updated snapshot ↓ tar.gz

Eight skills, including Receipt v3. This snapshot differs from the GitHub release installed by the command above.